Details

Date Published

Date Built

CPU Clock Rate

CPU Temperature While Idle

CPU Temperature Under Load

GPU Core Clock Rate

GPU Effective Memory Clock Rate

1.5 GHz

GPU Temperature While Idle

33.0° C

GPU Temperature Under Load

70.0° C

Description

This build was 100% not planned at all and was literally planned up on a whim in one weekend.

The backstory on this case: My employer had a couple of really old Prebuilt systems lying around. (We install Fire Alarm, Security, and other types of systems) I asked and took both of them home. The Dell Precision 390 is the younger one at about 12-13 years old but its proprietary. However the Dell Dimension 2400 was almost 18 years old and its basically similar built to an MATX case, So I had this bright idea to take my HTPC which was in my old Core V21 and put it in this!

This build was very straight forward and everything fit with almost no modification to the case which surprised me. In-fact the whole front panel works and lights up, and all the USB ports as well. Only the front audio jack didn't fit and I just cut the wire out as there was no use for it. You put the side panel on and you'd thing the thing never left the early 2000s. The days of single core Celeron's, 512mb of RAM, and IDE for this PC are gone. Out with the old and in with the new... sorta...

Ive never done a sleeper build before so this was my first attempt at one and Id say Im pretty impressed with it. I tried my best with the cable management and the cooler which is also a remnant of another time for PCs just barely fit. This build is a mix of many components from different times. Adds to the character.

As for the hardware itself its a pretty powerful HTPC. Sandy Bridge while almost 8 years old at this point, is still no slouch in gaming tasks. The R9 390 which I found refurbished on Newegg is similar in performance to the RX 570 8GB and is perfect for 1080p gaming. The cooler keeps the locked i7 at respectable temps even in this airflow restricted case. Despite its size it rivals some of the newer, much larger coolers and for $30 was worth it. Finally the SSD was a last minute purchase to get the OS off an HDD from 2009, I have it mounted under the floppy disk drive with adhesive Velcro since this case has no mounting points for SSDs.

The motherboard i got on eBay is nothing special, the PSU was a spare part along with the RAM so not much worth mentioning about it.

Thanks for checking out my Dell Dimension, I swear its not what it looks like!

I used to have a plethora of used parts and I always reused them and then sell them or find a new home for them before recycling. Best someone can use them first before dumping it. Even a good case like this one cant go to waste.

I was actually considering putting my $1500 Ryzen System in it but a budget sleeper sounded more fun as its like trying to see how much performance you can get out of $300-$400 with a little twist. Eventually my Ryzen parts might end up in there anyway in 5-10 years, see how long this case lasts lol

I've actually wanted to do something extremely similar with my Dimension 2400 (Sandy Bridge and similar cooler), so this is really cool to see! (It's also good to know that a cooler of that size would fit) For now though, it sits as a borderline obsolete tower.